Urban Public Spaces

This book is about understanding, contextualizing and carrying out critical analyzes of the policies intended and/or implemented by the various public and private actors in urban public spaces, as well as the daily, or eventual, politics exercised by the organized civil society and by citizens. It presents a collection of contributions about the public space in different theoretical, conceptual and methodological approaches. Coming from different disciplines, the authors share an understanding about the need to analyze the uses and appropriations of the city by social subjects and groups as they represent difference and see the city as a place to share life experiences; as such, they argue, through their cases studies, that places of public use should be thought of and understood as concept and as social practice.

As an analytic tool, the book offers a five-dimension model to explore how people relate to daily life activities and confront imposed inequalities in their meeting places, how they engage in individual and collective manifestations and/or how they symbolically appropriate public spaces in face of the late capitalism led by large corporations and globalization. Together the authors seek to contribute to a city of utopia, where all differences can be seen and dealt with in public spaces and where free individuals can present themselves and engage in a vita activa.

Auteur

Lucia Capanema-Alvares is an Associate Professor at the Graduate Program in Architecture and Urban Planning of the Federal Fluminense University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Jorge Luiz Barbosa is an Associate Professor at the Graduate Program in Geography of the Federal Fluminense University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

This book includes contributions from leading experts: Ana Fany A. Carlos, Cristóvão Duarte, Eugenio Queiroga, Lia Beatriz Torraca, Angelo Serpa, and Vera Tângari. The foreword was written by Prof. Roger Caves.

Contenu
A multi-dimensional frame for analyzing Urban Public Spaces policies and politics.- The power of the body in public space: Urban as a deprivation of the right to the city.- Reinventing public spaces: Politics of oneself and politics with many others.- A Cornered Democracy: the echoes of the 2013 demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro and the architecture of a crisis.- Leisure and work in contemporary urban-metropolitan space: Perspectives, tendencies and utopias.- Open Public Spaces and the vita activa.- Open Space Systems in Rio de Janeiro: the public and private spheres reflected in the urban landscape.- The re-invention of the city through the favelas.- In the guise of a (global) comprehension: a multidimensional analysis of Urban Public Spaces through selected authors.